Cambio climático y Sistemática

Climate Change and Systematics

3 day meeting
1st to 3rd of September 2008

A meeting organised by the Department of Botany, School of Natural Sciences, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland

This meeting, organised on behalf of the Systematics Association and the Linnean Society, will provide a forum for systematists to present and discuss their research as it relates to the critical issue of Global Climate Change. The conference is open to everyone, whatever their chosen discipline within systematics.

This meeting will examine the problems posed by Global Climate Change and will centre on three themes: 1. Climate change and speciation/extinction; 2. Climate change and biogeography; 3. Climate change: documenting and conserving biodiversity.

We feel this meeting is timely because of interest in this topic at all levels in society, especially governmental. For example, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment states that 'By the end of the twenty-first century, climate change and its impacts may be the dominant direct driver of biodiversity loss and changes in ecosystem services globally' and 'Historically, habitat and land use change have had the biggest impact on biodiversity across biomes. Climate change is projected to increasingly affect all aspects of biodiversity, from individual organisms, through populations and species, to ecosystem composition and function'. The most recent IPCC report this year also highlights these issues. Therefore, global climate change needs to be addressed holistically by the systematics community.

Certainly the changes in the density and location of the World's biodiversity are likely to have impacts on speciation/extinction rates and on the ability of systematits to delimit, through Monographs, Faunas and Floras, the World's biodiversity.

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